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Sergei Rachmaninoff ( 1873-1943 )
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Rachmaninov was a musician with innate talent. His studies began early and ended quickly, delivering to the Russian musical world on the threshold of the 20th century, a young piano virtuoso with aspirations as a composer, in the best tradition of that musical romanticism which the Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories had been inspired by since since their birth by the brothers Anton and Nikolaj Rubinstein. And it is precisely a late romanticism made of lyrical abandonment and acrobatic virtuosity that Rachmaninov looks to in his first compositions, in which the free creative streak of the melodist shines and the excellent qualities of the pianist are amply highlighted.
The Second and Third Concertos for piano and orchestra (the famous and fearsome Rach. 3), written respectively in 1901 and 1909, undoubtedly his masterpieces, made him one of the favorites of the European and American public, satisfied with a music with an immediate communicativeness that contrasted with the "cerebral" one of the new twentieth century trends of Debussy, Ravel, Skrjabin, and further still, of Strauss, Stravinsky, Prokofev and Shostakovic.
The events of the Revolution of 1717 made him leave Russia and reach the United States in 1918, his new adopted homeland, where he was already known for a previous tour in 1910; the break with the motherland was clear, but in the Soviet Union his music was never banned, perhaps because it often echoes the nostalgic vein of Slavic taste, and the tribute of adoration towards the great masters such as Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.
What made his music attractive was also what his detractors reproached him for: an ease that can border on banality, pre-packaged musical structures with little connection to a personal identity, often used as a container for an expressiveness so rich that it becomes redundant. , a grandiloquence, finally, which perhaps hides the difficulty of dealing with musical material with discipline, especially orchestral one. Even the three Symphonies (1905, 1907, 1944) did not escape the same censorship, but Rachmaninoff, a man with a firm and surly character, did not give too much weight to the criticisms, certainly not blaming himself for an artistic "disengagement" which he preferred to a complexity, in his opinion, too often ideologically sought by his fellow composers. The Concerto for piano and orchestra n. 4, op. 40, of 1927 (revised in 1941) began, however, to introduce some innovations into Rachmaninov's musical discourse; greater timbric dryness, less melodic complacency, a more sincere intimacy demonstrate that the composer was nevertheless following an evolutionary path of his style, within which the work 43, the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, is situated as a moment of particular interest.
Divided into 24 variations, Paganini's Rhapsody on a Theme from 1934 is unanimously considered one of Rachmaninoff's most successful works. In it, in fact, the composer has skilfully combined virtuosic flair with the rigor of formal construction, creating a piece that harmonizes the taste of the general public, attentive to melodic ease and chromatic brilliance, with the expectations of the more expert , capable of grasping the original solidity of this work. The theme of the variations is Capriccio n. 24 in A minor from the 24 Capricci op. 1 written in 1805 by the Italian violinist, but, contrary to what it would be obvious to think, the Rhapsody is not a tribute to Paganini, but to Franz Liszt, who in turn, in 1838, worked on the same Capriccio in his Études d'éxécution trascendante after Paganini. A tribute, therefore, between great piano virtuosos and composers who, ideally, passed the baton between two centuries.
It goes without saying that in this context Rachmaninov shoots all the arrows he has in his quiver, fascinating the listener with every type of sound game, in a sort of melodic and timbral illusionism, thanks to which the Paganini theme appears and disappears between the folds of a creative imagination that is never complacent, and always aimed towards an expressive result inserted within a non-random discursive structure. From this perspective, in fact, we can read the first eleven variations as a sort of Allegro, in which all the thematic ideas typical of the first movement of a meta-concert unfold, which has its central Largo in the variations from 12 to 18, marked by a warm lyricism typical of the composer's style, and the final Presto in numbers 19-24, in which the rhythmic and timbral dynamism forcefully returns to the foreground in the rhapsodic revival of the melodic ideas treated in the first group of variations.
Thus, what at first sight might seem merely an exercise in virtuosity as an end in itself is enriched in an unexpected way, and is the result of a conscious structuring desire. Furthermore, this Rhapsody is part of Rachmaninov's thematic-reflexive path, linked to the highly symbolic use of the Gregorian melody of the Dies Irae which appears here from the seventh variation onwards. In addition to being a further reference to Liszt's musical world (the Totentanz for piano and orchestra is a paraphrase), this theme seems to run across some of Rachmaninov's works, highlighting in the composer an unsuspected tragic feeling of human existence. The first hint of this gloomy and painful vision was in the 1904 melodrama The Avaricious Knight based on a text by Pushkin, which then materialized in the use of the Dies Irae melody for the symphonic poem op.29, The Island of the Dead, of 1908 , directly inspired by the very famous painting by Bòcklin; the cantata Le bells, to a text by E. A. Poe, written between 1913 and 1936, the Rhapsody op. 43 of 1934, the Third Symphony op. 44, from 1936, and, finally, the Symphonic Dances op. 45, from 1940. are the places of the subsequent appearances of the disturbing theme of death, certainly a sincere legacy of a Romanticism poised between angels and demons to which, by tradition and emotional affinities, Rachmaninov can be traced back.
Antonín Dvořák ( 1841-1904 )
Symphony N.9 in Eminor B.178
New World Symphony
On 16 December 1893 Anton Seidl conducted the first performance of Symphony No. at Carnegie Hall in New York. 9 in E minor op. 95 by Antonìn Dvorak, in the presence of the author. It was probably the highlight of Dvorak's three-year stay in the United States, between October 1892 and April 1895. Dvorak had been invited in June 1891 to move to New York, to take over the artistic direction of the local Conservatory , by Jeannette Thurber, wife of a wealthy colonial goods merchant; invitation accepted after some hesitation and the assurance of understandable guarantees (among other things the considerable salary of 15 thousand dollars per year).
The enormous developments in New York musical life in the last part of the century thus found a logical outcome in the strengthening of educational structures, with the presence of an eminent European composer. It is no coincidence that the choice fell on Dvorak.
Coming from a lower-middle-class family and given an early introduction to music, Dvorak achieved his first real success in 1873, at the age of 31, with a patriotic hymn that fit fully into the irredentist current of Bohemian cultural circles. The following year a prestigious recognition, with the victory of a scholarship from the Austrian government, awarded by a jury composed of, among others, Eduard Hanslick and Johannes Brahms. Following was the international launch: the first personal triumph in England dates back to 1884 - where the composer went a total of nine times - which led to his nomination as an honorary member of the London Philharmonic Society; in 1890 he was to receive an honorary degree from Cambridge University.
These stages of Dvorak's career also closely followed the personal evolution of the composer's style. If his creative beginnings took place under the banner of the neo-German school of Liszt and Wagner, whose modernism seemed more suitable for conveying the peculiar nationalistic contents of Czech culture, it was precisely around 1873 that Dvoràk's style underwent a sharp turn towards pure symphonism and the ideals of classic balance of form, ideals that found new life in popularly inspired melodies. It is precisely this peculiar mixture between formal balance and Slavic melodiousness that led to recognizing in Dvoràk a musician with an unmistakable personality, neither conservative nor radical, capable of appearing to the Bohemian bourgeoisie as an incarnation of national identity, or even of being admired in front of the whole of Europe for the refinement of his writing and the constructive solidity of his works.
The invitation to America therefore had the meaning of a consecration; but the contact with a composite musical culture, evolving and so dissimilar to the European one could not fail to have repercussions on the new creative results of the Bohemian master. Some black students put the master in contact with the music of black Americans, with spirituals and plantation songs. In Spilville, Iowa, the composer had the opportunity to listen to songs from the Indian community. The Symphony in E minor is the first important response to these stimuli, and it is no coincidence that it bears the famous title "Z Nového svéta" (From the new world); precisely the discussed influence of the new world constitutes the central point of the various evaluations that have been made of the score.
Dvorak illustrated the title of the work by explaining that it simply referred to "impressions and greetings from the new world"; still during the writing he stated that "America's influence can be felt by anyone with 'nose'". And many composers wondered if, with the new Symphony, Dvorak intended to inaugurate a new manner, marked by the presence of melodies inspired by composite American folklore. And indeed the presence of such melodies is undeniable; in the first half the spiritual «Swing low, sweet chariot» appears, while some melodies of the central movements have a generic "Indian" inspiration. However, pentatonic melodies and modal harmony, rhythmic vitality, are characteristic of all Dvorak's music; Furthermore, the score does not lack clear traits of Bohemian folklore. If anything, the whole melodic invention of the Symphony in E minor presents a "primitive" extraction, more clearly highlighted than in the author's previous symphonic experience.
In short, if we want to find a "turning point" in Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, this will have to be identified, more than in the melodic invention, in the process of simplification and clarification of the form which gives these ideas plastic evidence, distancing the score from the sweet seriousness of the Seventh and the independent experimentalisms of the Eighth. Even the development sections of the material - which generally constitute the weak point of the Bohemian author's symphonism, due to a certain verbosity and dialectical poverty - are addressed with greater ease than in previous symphonic works.
Precisely the formal aspect is one of the traits that most guarantees the Symphony its coherence, and therefore its undoubted and engaging effectiveness in performance. The score in fact makes use of an accumulative process of the material, with increasingly greater thematic returns with the succession of movements (among other things, the affinities between the different pentatonic melodies emerge clearly because these are mainly entrusted to the woodwind soloists). Furthermore, each of the four movements opens with a short, slow introduction.
In the first movement the introductory Adagio progressively rises, exploiting a rhythmic cue, towards the characteristic theme that opens the Allegro tanto; this entire first half, animated by secondary themes of iconic evidence, is influenced by a wealth of episodes and plots, of sudden expressive transitions, which give the page a continuously renewed freshness.
In the Largo a succession of large chords leads to the pentatonic melody which informs the entire lyrical and suffused setting of the movement, not contradicted even in the most animated central section (the culminating moment presents a fragment of the main theme of the first movement).
In the Scherzo we find Dvorak's taste for rhythmic vitality and color variety, supported by the infallible hand of the orchestrator, by the sure invention of the characteristic themes. The ending is more complex, opened by the peremptory statement of the theme that ensured the Symphony its celebrity, and which is then reiterated at the end, in an extreme peroration. Furthermore, as the movement continues, the main melodic ideas already heard in previous movements accumulate; procedure already used in central times. But Dvorak is not satisfied with restating these ideas; he elaborates them and intertwines them with the main theme of the finale, so that the final movement presents itself as a synthesis of the content of the entire Symphony, and of the composer's own symphonic art.
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